Jan 26, 2006 at 20:02 o\clock

I’m really trying hard to embrace the ‘Self-acceptance is the key to long-term weight loss’ philosophy. The self-loathing philosophy failed to get me to goal for my first 40 years, so what the hell. I’ve got to try something new, and a bit of self-acceptance is no bad thing. And if it works, so much the better!

Changes are happening, and I realised last night that I'm beginning to accept myself, and finally developing a long overdue sense of perspective. I went out with some colleagues for a quick drink after a seminar in London, and the conversation in the train on the way home went something like this:

Colleague #1:Didn’t that woman in the pub look hideous.

Me:What woman?

Colleague #2:Omigod, yes! She must have been at least 20 stone! It should be against the law to flash that much flesh when you look like that.

Colleague #3: Yeah, true – but her mate was no oil painting either, was she?

Colleague #1:Omigod, that’s right! She looked like a Twiglet, didn’t she? What a bloody contrast. I’ve seen starving villagers in Africa that looked fatter than she did,

Gales of laughter from all three colleagues.

Me:Which women are you talking about?

Colleague #1:The ones sitting at the next table to us, who both got up and started dancing when that bloke put ‘Don’t You Wish Your Girlfriend Was Hot Like Me’ on the jukebox.

Renewed gales of laughter from all three colleagues.

I wracked my brains for the whole two hour journey home, and yet I still couldn’t visualise the two women they were being so nasty about. They simply hadn’t registered on my radar screen at all.

That’s how come I know I’ve changed.

Previously, I was always fixated with the shapes of the women around me. I was always comparing myself mentally against them – I’m fatter than her, her bum’s bigger than mine etc. etc.This obsession intensified when I was ‘dieting’, but it never went away entirely. I used to drive K crazy asking him whether I looked bigger or smaller than this or that woman – and I knew it drove him crazy, but I couldn’t stop doing it.

Good job he loves me, huh?

I got home last night and asked K if he could remember the last time I asked him the ‘Am I fatter than her?’ question, and he thought about it for a while and then said he didn’t think I’d asked him that since the summer. He said it made a nice change! Heh.

My outlook has altered so radically that at the moment I couldn’t care less what other women look like. I don’t know if it’s a temporary or permanent attitude adjustment, but that bitchy internal monologue seems to have switched off, and I feel much more chilled and happy as a consequence.

If I do notice someone’s body, I don’t feel that insecure compulsion to compare it against mine and give us each a comparative score.It just doesn’t seem important any more. Every day I’m surrounded by women – some are older, some younger, most are thinner, a few are fatter, some are in great shape, some have boobs and bellies dragging on their kneecaps, some are gorgeous, some are ordinary.

I’ve stopped seeing them as rivals, as if we were all competitors in a beauty pageant, and started seeing them as just other women instead, and it’s so liberating!

The self-acceptance part means that I’ve finally seen that although I’ll never be the youngest or the thinnest or the fittest or the prettiest it really doesn’t matter!

I’m beginning to feel comfortable with myself, for the first time ever. I know I’ve got boobs like spaniel’s ears, and a belly like a deflated beach ball. I know that I’ll never be a runner or a gymnast or a ballerina or a supermodel. I’ll always be short, and I’ll always have curly hair, and I’ll always be short sighted, and no amount of walking or cycling is going to turn my chunky legs into slender willowy ones. I’ll probably always bite my nails, and I’ll always know my hair turned grey whilst I was still a teenager, and I’ll always have the scar bisecting my belly from my navel to my pubic bone from when I had my cystectomy (which is why K calls my stomach my ‘front bottom’. Heh heh).

None of that matters.

I’m a hell of a long way from perfect, and I know I’ll have days when I feel like the bride of Frankenstein, but I’ve finally stopped feeling innately ugly and inadequate, and it feels bloody fabulous!

Comments for this entry:

PastaQ wrote at Jan 26, 2006 at 23:32 o\clock:I have to admit, now that I\'m getting thinner I find myself paying more attention to other people than I ever did before. I was at the movies last weekend and I was trying to figure out how many people in the theatre were fatter than me. I\'m used to being the fattest person in the room, so I guess I find some small joy in knowing that\'s not always the case anymore. It was especially strange because I had never noticed how many fat people there are in my town, but there were definitely more fat folks than thin people there.